Up to a decade or so ago, however, most musings about attention were either speculative or after the fact. From ancient Buddhist meditation practices to the recent rash of obituaries for civilization as we know it, we've been paying attention to attention as long as recorded history. And the science of grabbing your valuable attention for even a few seconds - those sticky eyeballs - has become a bonanza industry for advertisers, researchers, politicians, lobbyists and hucksters of every stripe.īut it's not just marketers who have suddenly discovered the importance of attention. Morning to night, you're bombarded with interruptions and ever more urgent demands on your attention. These days, there's no better way to get people talking than to mention how distracted you've become. How long before your mind wandered? Ten seconds? A minute? You just forgot what you'd started? Focus on the dot and nothing else for 30 minutes. Not enough time? Then try William James's 1890 thought experiment: Draw a dot on a piece of paper. Focus instead on whatever you're doing, moment by moment. Forget about multitasking, which turns out to be a myth anyway.
Avoid malls, box stores, doom-and-gloom articles about the latest news on terrorism, financial meltdowns, global pandemics, murders and celebrities. Put aside that ambitious to-do list for the weekend. So try this experiment: For the rest of today, turn off your radio, your TV, TiVo and Internet connection, your iPod and your smart phone. Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, we're all amateur psychologists endlessly running our own private experiments on how to live. According to Winifred Gallagher's new book,
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